Monday, 23 March 2015

15 Pre-Reading Activities to Prepare Your Child for Reading

You are a mother who wants the best for her
child. You want him to have the best advantages in life and a head start in
learning. You’re willing to sacrifice your precious time by finding the best
teaching practices and opportunities for him. Although it’s not really a
sacrifice of your time as you enjoy teaching him and watching him learn new
things.

The best advantage you can give your child
is the ability to read. In today’s society, everything requires one form of
reading or another, from books and magazines to forms and instruction manuals.
There is also a choice of reading from online sources or offline physical
items. Reading is everywhere!

But before your child can begin to read,
you’d need to lay the ground works to prepare him. He may not yet be ready to
read but laying the foundations will help to foster an environment of learning.

Below are 15 pre reading activities that
will help develop reading readiness.

1. Bake
Name Biscuits. Using your favourite biscuit recipe
let your child help you make a batch. Roll each biscuit into letters that form
your child’s name. Bake it and when they’re cooked, arrange the letters to make
her name. Tell her that it is her name. Alternatively, you can make the letters
of the alphabet and tell her that these are alphabet biscuits.

2. Fish
for Letters. Pour some magnetic letters into a
container. Attach a string to a large magnet and let your child fish a magnet
out. Tell him the letter every time he’s caught a letter.

3. Listen
to Beginning Sounds. Exaggerate the beginning
sounds in words. When you say stop, say it like, “Sssssstop!” Try other words such as “Nnnnice!”,
“Grrrrrrrreat!” and “Fffffantastic!” Encourage
her to do the same. When you stress the beginning sounds in words, you are
training your child to listen to the sounds in words.

4. Magnetic
Letters. Get some magnetic letters and a magnetic
board and let your child arrange the letters any way he wants. Children love
playing with magnets and playing with the letters will familiarize him to the
various letters and its shape.

5. Make
a Book. Staple some paper together and let your
child scribble and draw in it. Once he’s finished you can ‘read’ it to him by
looking at each page and describe the lines and shapes that he’d drawn. Alternatively, you can encourage your child
to tell a story or talk about something and you can scribe it. Then have him
draw to illustrate it.

6.
Match the Letters. This game encourages your child
to distinguish between letters. Start with 3 different letters such as a, h and
w. Have two sets of each and place them on the table. Pick up a letter and ask
your child where its twin is. Continue in this way as you change letters and
then increase the number of letters that you play with.

7. Letter
or Word Hunt. When you’re outside, play a game of
word search by looking for regularly occurring words in the environment such as
stop, give way and parking.

8.
Play Dough Letters. Use play dough letter cutters
to make letters or show your child how to roll the play dough into a long
‘snake’ and form letter shapes from it.

9.
Play with Letter Puzzles. Wooden letter shaped
puzzles with pegs attached to them are the best to use. Putting the correct
letters in their place will familiarize your child with the shapes of the
letters.

10.
Read Books. Read books every day. By reading books
to your child, she will grow to love books. Make the books available to your
child by placing her favourites mixed in with some new books on the shelf. You
will find that she will revisit her favourites and read it by looking at the
pictures again and again.

11.
Read Rhyming Books. Reading rhyming books (like the
Dr Seuss books) to your child allows him to listen to and distinguish between
similar sounding words.

12.
Sing Nursery Rhymes. Nursery rhymes are great for
introducing your child to similar sounding words. Sing a variety of different
rhymes.

13.
Sing the Alphabet song.Singing
this everyday will familiarize your child to the letter names and the order in
which they come.

15. Sticker
Letters. Provide your child with letter stickers,
available from the scrapbooking sections of a craft store, and let her stick
them on a piece of paper to make a letter collage. Later, you can look at it
and make comments such as, “Can you see another one of this letter?” or “Let’s
count how many of this letter you’ve used.”

If you’re interested in teaching your child
to read then keep a lookout for my book
‘First Steps in Teaching Your Child to Read’ which is soon to be released.
In it you will find my system for teaching
prekinders to read before they enter school. I have taught my own
children the same way.